Lost And Foundering

Shortly before we left our jobs to travel, D took a funny phone call at the Indian gig. Given the likelihood that answering the phone there would mean listening to someone start rattling away in a tongue other than English, just hearing the phone ring made my skin crawl in apprehension. Too many years spent working in loud music clubs have damaged my hearing in certain situations, and I'd always have to ask the caller to repeat himself six or seven times. It didn't help, either, that so many South Asians have telephone voices that register about three decibels quieter than a sparrow fart. But D, she's got young ears and excellent phone etiquette, she answers with the name of the joint and her name, then "How may I help you?"

"Hello, Doobie," responds the thick Indian accent on the other end of the line, "walla walla dinnah boo-fay?"

Not even fazed by the misunderstood name or the utter incomprehensibility of the entire exchange, she sussed that the guy's wondering if our lunch buffet might also be available in the evenings. No, she tells him, the dinner menu is a la carte. Thank yous are traded and the call is over. By the time I arrive for my shift later that evening, D and K have adopted the man's strange query as a punchline, infectious as much for the mysteries contained in its nonsense syllables as for the lilting, musical, heavily accented soprano required of its delivery. I still smile when I hear it, and sometimes we bust it out just to crack each other up, lighten a mood. It's become a shorthand for our experience of walking around a foreign land in which we speak but one of the 300 languages in daily use, that of the erstwhile colonizers.

And many times that's not a problem. English is the lingua franca for so many exchanges over here, a common language more common than Hindi in South India, where Tamil, Telugu, Cannada, and Malayalam speakers have resisted efforts at uniting under a common tongue. Team Yahoo!, bright young minds from all over India, spoke English at work and play, and I'd need all the fingers on Shiva's dozen arms to count the times we've watched a beach-cafe table populated by Israelis, Germans, Russians, French kids, and the odd Japanese traveler communicate with their Indian waiter in 31 luscious flavors of English.

This week, however, our functional illiteracy and ignorance of the local tongue have combined to make Sisyphean tasks of even the most mundane interactions. In Chennai, the cosmopolitan burg where we met up with our old boss from Cambridge, A, we were offered numerous suggestions for meals and sights around town. There was this one American-style diner where A recommended the cheeseburger, a hankering I didn't know existed in me until I heard the word ("Mmmmmm, cheeeeeseburger..."). We knew the neighborhood and we knew the name of the joint, we even knew the street it was on, and it still took us two rickshaws, forty-five minutes, and several stops while our drivers asked for directions. The problem, you see, is that many streets in Chennai are known by two names: one given by the English, one reflecting the postcolonial efforts to re-Tamil-ize Tamil Nadu. We've run into this all over India, where the trains stop in Mumbai (Marathi name), not Bombay (English corruption), at VT (Victoria Terminus, as in Queen) and not Chatrapati Shivaji (Marathi king and popular tongue-twister) Terminus. What you call your hometown depends on when you were born there, before or after the new names came in. Most people older than twenty will eschew their native tongues and the current maps and the larger political overtones of reclaiming a land from centuries of colonial rule, referring out of habit to the Anglicized names of cities and streets.

So confusion reigned supreme as we searched out a burger and fries in the land of the Holy Cow. We kept telling the second driver "Spurtank Road," to which he would respond "You wan' go what bank?" And I'd name the road again, slower and louder, all too conscious that I was in danger of being that guy who shouts words from a foreign tongue in the futile, idiotic hope that increased volume might spark recognition in the eyes of a person who does not understand them. We've all seen that guy, whether he's talking to hired help in the States or a tuk-tuk driver in Chennai. He ain't pretty. I didn't want to be him, but I also didn't want to spend any more time than was absolutely necessary sucking blue fumes while being driven in circles. Our progress literally described a squared circle as we left Egmore station, turning south east north west in a diminishing spiral, stopping for directions at a handful of roadside stores until bang in front of us was the diner, checkerboard wall tiles and all. We were three blocks due south of the station, to the best of my reckoning.

Alas, that was one tasty hamburger.

The next day we found ourselves on a similar fool's errand. The Theosophical Society has a large park in Adyar, southeast of the city center, where there's a library with arcane religious texts on display and a 400-year-old banyan tree on the grounds that can shade upwards of 3000 people. Sounds impressive, right? We agreed. We set out from Anna Salai, the center's main drag, on one of the buses our books said would take us to the gates of the park. Just spitballing the issue while waiting for the bus, I tried to get a rate for a rickshaw to the Theosophical Society. Those nine syllables were getting me nowhere, no matter how loud or how slow, so I tried "Adyar Library," an alternate name in our LP. "Adyar?" came the response. "Which hotel you going?"

So close, and yet...

The bus put us out a click and a half from Elliots Beach, which abuts the park on the latter's eastern border. That much we knew. We found the wall surrounding the grounds, but no gate. The gate's address was listed as Blavatsky Avenue, and every road sign (surprisingly there they were, and even in English!) only named numbered cross streets. First Main Road's Second Cross Street, and suchlike. We asked at the sidewalk bubble tea spot that didn't serve bubble tea, and they didn't know what we were asking. We asked the guy at the smokes'n'paan stall outside the no-bubble-tea spot, and he didn't know either. We asked a rickshaw driver who was waiting while his fare conducted business inside one of the homes or shops on one of the cross streets, and our smiling faces were met with the next in a long line of blank stares. Here we were, within sight of the wall surrounding 240 acres of private park containing a tree big enough to toilet paper half of India, and nobody knows how to get inside. Not only did nobody know how to get where we were going, they didn't even seem to know that such a place existed. We may as well have been asking for the directions to the Octopus's Garden, the Black Gate of Mordor, some acid fantasy inhabited by the irretrievably bent. They stared at us like we had frogs in our hair. By the time our last hope extinguished in the unknowing eyes of those we'd asked for help, the park's gates were set to close in minutes. Par for the course, we decided, packing it in and heading back to A's place, heads hanging and brains aching from the effort, leaving Chennai the next morning without having seen anything to justify our trouble.

But some days it's like that. Central Mumbai is a very walkable city, easy to navigate and fun besides. Chennai, not so much. Our maps were not granular enough to be of any assistance beyond figuring which part of town we might be in. Even then, Chennai's a booming city and our maps, granular or not, were at least two years old. Them's the breaks. They can't all be winners, kid.

From the disappointment of Chennai we headed south to Mamallapuram, a stone-carving beachside town that was tiny and easily navigable and presented a perfect chance to clean the frogshit out of our hair. We're now in Pondicherry, a city independent of Tamil Nadu that was held by France until the late 1950's. Here we have encountered the pleasant surprise that is hearing the Parisian tongue spoken by Indian mouths. Yet another curiousity in this land of contradictions, our guesthouse is owned by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, the main draw for foreigners in Pondy. There's a utopian village on the outskirts of town, funded by the ashram and home to almost 2000 "citizens of the world." D and I are a little creeped out by the whole issue, which is a bit too Heaven's Gate for our tastes. Get this: there's a picture over our bed of the movement's late matriarch, known simply as "The Mother." I've had to fight the impulse to turn it facing the wall, but I think they might be watching and we like the room.

So Mom will watch over our restful slumber for another two nights, we'll rise for croissants in the morning and sip espresso in the afternoon, and Thursday we hop a 13-hour train to Trivandrum, in Kerala. They call it "God's Own Country" in all the Tourism Department literature. Given the Babel trip we've been on these last ten days, it won't surprise me to arrive and find a big grey-haired Jerry-Garcia-lookin' dude smiling down from the sky, shouting in God's Own Language, speaking louder when we don't understand.

Cluck'n'gobble

If you're reading this back home, we hope you're having a happy Thanksgiving. To everyone else on the planet, happy Thursday. We're here on the shores of the Bay of Bengal dreaming of pumpkin pies and turkey sandwiches, but there's fresh seafood down the street that should make up for what we're missing. So while you're gathering around the table and celebrating everything and everyone you have to be thankful for, know that we're doing the same and including all of you. Best wishes, and may your day be better than your turkey's.

Oh, and one more thing:

I shot my feathered (and de-feathered) friends here at Kodai's Sunday market, where they were on sale for a poultry sum. If you want to see more, we've got chickens and monkeys and holy freakin' cows in glorious full-screen color over there on Webshots. D is arranging the digital shots every week or ten days, so check back often to see what's for dinner. For easy navigating in the future, you'll also find the link on the sidebar menu at left. Peace.

You Shall Know Our Velocity!

I woke up this morning already sticky from the steam boiling off the teeming streets of Chennai. In the interim between my wristwatch beeping at 6 and my lazy ass rolling out of bed, I had one of those half-sleeping, half-waking dreams that bubbles up fully realized despite its brevity. In the dream I was flying to Paris for breakfast, looking to score nothing more than a chocolate croissant and a demitasse of espresso before my return flight. Knowing my stay would last no longer than it took to secure a morning snack, my dream-self browsed my dream-closet in search of the single shirt that would get me through the trip.* The armchair psychologist in me figures two things: 1) that I'm hungry for something beyond the idli-dosa, and B) that our whirlwind tour of India is less cool breeze than cyclone-force gale.

Here's the post-Bangalore breakdown, with a handy timeline for those of you keeping score:

SAT 3 NOV-TUE 6 NOV: Mysore

We took the afternoon train from Bangles to Mysore, a beautiful route through acres and acres of canefields in full flower, their pink-white tassles rolling in the afternoon breeze. Mysore is a hub for the production of sandalwood and incense, and the Devaraja Market in the town center is a speed-metal concert for the senses. Every other stall features piles of multicolored tikka powder and every other hawker is looking to rub his collection of essential oils on your wrist and forearm. Floral aromas of every olfactory shade perfume the air with such intensity that passing bumblebees explode in midair, unable to process the embarrassment of riches. D left the market after our first trip with ten different scents cloaking her arms, nine of which were so vivid and cloying that she spent twenty minutes at the sink afterward trying to smell like people again. Satisfactorily scrubbed, we ambled toward the Maharaja's Palace for their Sunday night lightshow (pictured). For one hour each week the Palace is illuminated by enough lightbulbs to explain blackouts in Bangladesh. The good folks in charge waive the entrance fee for that one hour, during which a carnival atmosphere and thousands of people descend upon the grounds. Smiles still on our faces and the syrupy scents from the vendors outside the gate firing our appetites, we headed to the nearest sweets shop to sample a half-dozen variations on the four food groups: ghee, gram flour, rosewater and jaggery.**

TUE 6 NOV-WED 7 NOV: Ooty

We'd been flirting with the Western Ghats, the mountain range just inland from the Arabian Sea, for our entire southward crawl from Mumbai. This far south they comprise the Nilgiri (or "Blue Mountain") range, and are dotted with hill stations established by the British Raj. Tea bushes and This White Guy flourish in the cool climate, but the drive (pictured) to Ooty (the universally-preferred alternative to Udaghamandalam) is so much nicer than the reality of the town itself. D said it best, remarking with her characteristic wit that "This place would be cute about twenty years ago, when it was cute." Indeed. Today Ooty is a dusty, smoggy, traffic-choked sprawl that's not even in the same fucking zip code as Cute. In a nutshell, for those who like it nutty: the town's lake, called (I shit you not) Reflections Lake, is a popular pedalboating destination for flocks of Indian tourists. It's also the collection point for like half the town's raw sewage. Cheery, nah? We stayed the night and rolled out on the first bus for

WED 7 NOV-WED 14 NOV: Kodaikanal

After the psychout that was Ooty, we were a little apprehensive on the eight-hour-plus ride to Kodai. As if to allay our fears, the switchbacked road into the mountains, which we ascended in our DVD Coach (playing the original Spiderman in subtitled English), kept climbing and twisting to offer us a better view of the sunset burning over the lakes stretched below the foothills that receded ever further behind us the evening's mist. We pulled into town after dark, tucking into a quick bite before bed and hopeful dreams of a mountain paradise.

Any possibility of disappointment disappeared with the sunrise. Our first daylight glimpse of Kodai revealed a beautiful town tentacled over and between a handful of peaks and valleys around 7000 feet. Gone were the rickshaws of Ooty and their sickening fumes, replaced by the kind of clean, thin, mountain air that induces euphoria rather than chemical lightheadedness. We walked the town, from the Tibetan restaurants and Western-style health-food store on the market road to the long promenade around the town's sewage-free lake to the southern route out of town that seemed perpetually ringed by clouds that stretched out beneath the sun like Shiva's down comforter. Sitting on the balcony of our room and looking out over those milky clouds, we knew that we'd be staying in Kodai for a while.

And good thing, too. We met a handful of people who reinforced our initial impression of the place, people who smiled with an unforced honesty that seemed to radiate from the town's very core, oozing into the groundwater and onto the faces of those lucky enough to call it home. Among them were I, the proprietor of Manna Bake Restaurant, who serves a world-famous apple crumble with custard accompanied by his warm alto and the Indian Christian music playing on the cassette deck. You can read two decades of his guests' handwritten hosannas in the volumes he places before you while you wait for your meal, which he prepares in the open kitchen of his own home, at his four-burner stove, ten paces from your seat at one of two communal tables in his main room. Then there was M (above right, with D), our guide on a grueling trek through the misty mountains (above left). He would stop occasionally to crumble a handful of leaves plucked from a trailside plant before offering them to us to smell and identify, or to point out the place where, only a few months ago, he and a couple of his Canadian charges encountered a ten-foot long king cobra that was none too happy with the uninvited company. All of 4'11" and 80 pounds, he led us for eight hours over rock and mud and along cliff faces dropping off into abyssal cloudcover beneath our feet, wearing his beaten blue flip-flops and a broad smile, never once breaking stride or sweat. As we passed a small, gaudy temple late in the afternoon, he summed up the entirety of Indian spirituality with one remarkably succinct utterance in his broken English:

"See temple? Many temples in India. Many temples, many stories." Then, finishing his thought, pointing at a cast-off chunk of cement beside our path, "You see, looks like stone on ground, but even stone on ground has story in India."

WED 14 NOV-THU 15 NOV: Madurai

M's words still ringing in my ears (and not only for the altitude), we rolled out of Kodai to the temple town of Madurai. Our hotel in the old quarter overlooked the several gopurams marking the massive Meenakshmi temple complex. It was a dizzying view from the roof of the joint (pictured), where we went after nightfall to watch someone a few blocks away set off the remainder of his Diwali fireworks. But the heat and press of the city, naked under the sun that scorches Tamil Nadu's plains even in winter, proved too much for us after idyllic Kodai. So on to

THU 15 NOV-SAT 17 NOV: Trichy

We had heard conflicting reports about Tiruchirappali. The English couple we met along the trail with M recommended it as a fun stop with lots to do, but A in Chennai emailed us that "Trichy is boring." Had A added "crowded around the holidays," we would have known to head straight for the big city. We got off the bus from Madurai and tried to score rooms in at least a dozen hotels and guest houses around the bus stand, exhausting our guidebooks' suggestions and those of every desk clerk insisting that there would be available doubles in the joint next door. We finally threw ourselves at the mercy of Fate, in the form of a rickshaw driver who asked several helpful passersby where there might be a room to be had. We wound up at the front door of the only joint in the area we didn't check about thirty seconds (and thirty rupees) after getting in the rickshaw around the corner. We took the last room in the place, a super-luxe AC room on the top floor with a distant view of the town's puzzlingly famous Rock Fort (pictured), a long climb up a small mountain to two tiny temples. The room was by far the nicest we've stayed in, but with a price tag to match. A single night exceeded our daily budget by almost 50%, but the comfort after so long in questionable digs convinced us to stay two nights in Trichy for no reason other than to enjoy our room.

There followed an overnight bus to Chennai late Saturday, meeting up with A for lunch after a nap Sunday morning, and here we are, typing through a rainy Monday and ready to move on again tomorrow. No wonder I'm dreaming the caviar dreams of the Jet Set. We'll surely stop to smell the jasmine at some point along the road, but the moment-to-moment thrill of seeing new places, faces, and landscapes is too appealing to relent just yet. And just south of here, in the former French colony of Pondicherry, there's a croissant au chocolat that's screaming my name in at least three different languages.

*: I've been in India long enough to absorb some of the local standards of modesty, as I rolled out of bed in this dream already wearing pants.
**: For the uninitiated, that's clarified butter, pulverized chickpea, floral distillate, and raw cane sugar.

Curiouser And Curiouser

The contrast between the familiar and the exceptional was everywhere around me. A bullock cart was drawn up beside a modern sports car at a traffic signal. A man squatted to relieve himself behind the discreet shelter of a satellite dish. An electric forklift truck was being used to unload goods from an ancient wooden cart with wooden wheels. The impression was of a plodding, indefatigable, and distant past that had crashed intact, through barriers of time, into its own future. I liked it.

--from Gregory David Roberts' Shantaram

From the moment I read this passage, in which Roberts' narrator recounts his first impressions of Bombay, it lodged in my consciousness like a burr in my slippers. That penultimate sentence perfectly encapsulates our experience of India thus far, where the old and the new dance together, whirling and entwining and making love on the bustling sidewalk between the glass high-rise and the open sewer, begetting a child, India, with her feet in the muddy primeval and her eyes ever turned toward the sunrise.

And nowhere has that enduring dichotomy rung more true than in Bangalore, the capital of India's high-tech industry and foster child of our global economy. We arrived early, getting down from a bus that had traveled through the night over dusty, unpaved roads that were jagged mountain ranges, with peaks and valleys shaking bouncing rollicking us from stolen minutes of fitful slumber. Just outside the city the single dirt lane changed to a crowded modern highway, sardined with the morning's commuters honking and jockeying for position in the crawl toward the 9-to-5. A rickshaw found us and accepted our haggled rate to get to MG (Mahatma Gandhi) Road, the center of town, where we found one of the ubiquitous chain coffeehouses and tucked into large, steaming cups of The Real Thing. We spent an hour or so chatting with an Australian traveler who had arrived in India through Pakistan and China, sharing stories and comparing notes on our experiences thus far. Happily caffeinated and a little jittery after our long night and the shock of brewed black coffee, we parted ways and went in search of food.

We had time to kill, as our Couchsurfing host, P, would not be arriving in Bangles* until late in the afternoon. And we trod the city sidewalks fully laden, as no hotelier could be convinced to keep our packs for a few hours at any price. Strange days, my friends, when not even the baksheesh can get you access to a left-luggage room. South of MG Road, the streets are lined with Western chain stores and restaurants, the signage above your head touting the wares of European and American corporations. You can buy your Levi's next door to the nightclub selling Heineken, get a new pair of Skechers across from the "First International Donut Chain in India." We had read about this proliferation of chain eateries around the MG Road area, and I was in the midst of a full-on Mac Attack by the time we saw the Golden Arches.

Let me explain: We had been restricted to South Indian idli-dosa breakfasts in Gokarna town and the small number of beach shacks dishing out mediocre-to-bad multicuisine fare after the early sunsets made the rocky headlands between the beaches no-travel zones for safety reasons. This had been our enforced diet for a week on Kudle Beach, and while the banoffee pie at Ganga was extraordinary (and dearer by ten rupees than a room for the night), we were roundly unimpressed by the Indian food we had been able to obtain apart from the aforementioned breakfasts. A few nights of lousy curries and strangely palatable pizzas, and I figured we might as well push our tolerances for shite food to the very corners of that greasy envelope.

So I had the Chicken Maharaja Mac** (fries and Coke), and D got the Paneer Salsa Wrap (ditto). And, oddly, they were far from terrible. But we were hungry, so...

A phone check with P gave us an approximate arrival time, so we figured that the best way to kill a couple more hours was to catch a flick. There was a glossy new mega-mall just east of the McDonald's, so we clomped down the road and through the metal detectors in front (the guards laughed when they saw our packs and waved us through with but a cursory pass of their wands). Up the escalators and through the jungle of consumerism, the Inox multiplex had no showtimes that matched our schedule. So, after noting the number of shoe stores (my right Teva blew out in Palolem and was on its last, er, legs?) and the timings of English-language flicks, we set off back toward McD's to another twin-screen cinema and sat down for our first Hindi picture in India.

The typical Bollywood movie is an extravagant affair, its palette every color of a candied kaleidescope, its musical numbers advancing the story as much as (if not more than) the dialogue that marks time between songs. That said, No Smoking is not your typical Bollywood movie. We could make neither heads nor tails of the plot, a dark existential comedy (or was it?) following the travails of a wealthy Mumbaiker who can't seem to kick the habit. It begins with a dream sequence (or was it?) against a snowy backdrop with goosestepping Russian soldiers and a faraway bathtub at the top of a steep hill. Thought balloons emanating from the main character's temples read in English, before switching to Hindi script. This is the sense it made from the first five minutes, and it was all downhill from there. One of P's friends (P2) later told us that it was a really interesting flick examining the courses a life can take following a single decision (or something?), how one's future can change or not, depending upon the choices made or decided against. I'm hip to the idea, and I'd like to check out a subtitled DVD at a later date, but all we got at the time was a really slick light show (with only one musical number) in a dark, air-conditioned room. For that, it was worth the rupees.

After No Smoking, we decided that the coffee from earlier was wearing off to a point that our senses, still not so keen after the long night and the longer morning/afternoon, should be treated to a few glasses of cold draft beer. And then maybe a few more. So we wandered into Guzzler's Inn, which is not nearly as shady as it sounds. In fact, it was refreshing to see an actual bar (gasp!) behind the darkened glass doors, and not the typical dim, dingy, depressing boozing parlour we had learned thus far to avoid. There were even women sitting and drinking and smoking and talking about whatever with their male colleagues and boyfriends. The crowd was young and vital, and guys strolled in with motorcycle helmets in one hand and pool-cue cases in the other, heading for the billiards tables upstairs. We ordered a pitcher of Kingfisher and sat while the surreal scene around us unfolded to the biggest Billboard hits of the 80's and 90's.

A glass or so into our relaxation, it hit me just how fucking foreign Bangalore seemed--for all its familiarity--after our last many weeks in India. The only constant element of our travels has been the fluidity of what it means to be In India. Here we were, sitting across a well-lit table from each other, mixed company among mixed company, listening to American tunes and to our fellow patrons speaking in English***. Hours before, we had eaten American-style fast food and cruised the mall like teenagers in every suburbia anywhere, staring in the windows at the portable advertisements of Western consumer culture**** up for sale at fixed prices, no haggling.

And the kinda sad, embarrassing, pitiable part of it is that it's exactly why we came to Bangalore. The sights and architecture and temples that have been our reasons for other destinations were not in evidence in Bangalore, which boasts a few nice old buildings and a botanical garden amidst the commercialized sprawl that the IT industry and its money have ushered in. I needed a new pair of sandals (which I found the next day after trying on 4400-rupee Nike flip-flops, the new new shit according to the young, punky-haired salesman) and we wanted to catch a flick (we saw one more the next day, this time in English) and eat some really good, expensive food (we had great North Indian and Thai meals at Sikander and Shiok, respectively). In short, we wanted to be American tourists in India's America. We were not disappointed.

So from the Guzzler's Inn to P's home east of the city center. We scarfed street-food dosas over introductions before retiring to some much-needed slumber. The next day was spent wandering the streets and the mall before meeting up with P (pictured left, with D and Me) and Team Yahoo! (pictured above, during pub power outage) at a bar with very mod framed graphic art of Zappa, Bowie, and Clapton. Enjoying the pub culture in the last (read: "only") place we thought we'd find it, we ate spicy Indian pub cuisine and quaffed pitcher upon pitcher until the management signaled that the pumpkin hour was approaching. We whiled away the wee hours after closing time in P2's apartment bitching about the lack of public transpo in Bangles and other notable towns and cities, and P provided the solo guitar accompaniment for a rollicking and horribly off-key round-robin of karaoke. We made dinner plans for the following night, which meant cooking up an Indianized batch of my patented shrimp etouffee after two extended and amazing excursions into the local supermarkets. The cajun drew raves (I'm proud to say) from a crowd of Indian kids making their way in Bangalore's modern marketplace. Sitting and talking with everyone made us feel like the world really is smaller than we let ourselves believe.

For better or worse? I'll leave such speculation to the professionals.

*: An unofficial nickname, one that I like (and will continue to use) as much for its flippancy as for its evoking the favored adornments of Indian women of every caste and class.
**: No beef in the burger joint, natch.
***: Given the 300 languages spoken throughout the country, the young IT set in Bangalore converse in English, a lingua franca more accessible to both North and South Indians than even Hindi.
****: There's a ubiquitous television commercial here for Zeiss spectacle lenses in which a cubicle dweller shows off his name-brand watch and name-brand shoes to his coworkers. Peering over the wall between them, his female colleague sees his generic glasses and exclaims, her nose wrinkled in disgust, "What's on your eyes, man?" Over giggles from the rest of the office, the voiceover intones "Brand nahi toh style nahi," which translates roughly as "Ain't got a brand, it ain't got style." It's one of the most disgusting examples of how pervasive consumer culture is getting over here, and one for which I want to cut the American right out of me. Not that I feel any different about such status-baiting back home.